Adam “Always Online” Orth no longer employed at Microsoft

Sources say mocking Twitter comments have led to his resignation—or termination.

With a public Twitter account comes great responsibility—a good rule of thumb is that you shouldn't tweet anything your mother or your boss would object to seeing. According to GameInformer, Microsoft Creative Director Adam Orth's tone-deaf comments regarding his inability to understand why rumors of an always-connected Xbox were causing some customers angst have led to his becoming former Microsoft Creative Director Adam Orth.

It's not known at this point whether Orth resigned from his position voluntarily or was fired (or was given the option to resign in lieu of termination), but the change appears to have occurred within the past day. GameInformer's attempts to reach Orth for comment via Microsoft's main number have been unsuccessful, lending additional credence to news of his departure.

Orth drew withering fire late last week with a series of tweets mocking potential customers who have issues with numerous rumors that Microsoft's next-generation console will require a constant connection to the Internet to play games (including single-player titles) and will boot players out of their game if their connection to the Internet is interrupted for more than a few minutes. The creative director let loose with a barrage of comments which were interpreted by most (including this author) as either uncaring or outright mocking, such as this one:

Twitter

The offending tweets were part of a conversation between Orth and BioWare developer Manveer Heir. Heir asked a number of valid questions—like, what if you live in a rural area with spotty Internet access, like Janesville, WI or Blacksburg, VA?

Orth's response: "Why on earth would I live there?"

Heir later attempted to explain the conversation as two friends just joshing each other ("You should know we are good friends who joke around with one another"), but at that point the damage had been well and truly done. Orth's comments—already championing the unpopular opinion that an always-online console was a perfectly fine thing and that anyone who didn't agree needed to "deal with it"—went classically viral. Orth even found his Twitter avatar featured in an ever-expanding set of images, highlighting his apparent deafness to criticism.

Orth appeared totally unprepared for the violent backlash his comments received and quickly set his Twitter account to private. He also appears to have deleted his LinkedIn account two days ago.

Microsoft previously released a statement via Community Manager Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb, which apologized for Orth's "inappropriate comments" but didn't do much to confirm or dismiss the rumors about the next-gen Xbox. Microsoft has not yet issued a statement on Orth's resignation or termination.

The new Xbox—with or without an always-online requirement—will be formally revealed on May 21st.

214 Reader Comments

Death threats, Really? Over comments made about always on. I'd hate to see what happens when MS actually announces always on console. Are there going to be bomb threats against MS? Jeez, some of these people on the internet take things waaay too seriously.

He may have made bad choices in his misplaced humor, but that in no way means he deserves the kind of backlash that would cause him to delete social networking accounts.

Let's be fair, I'd be pretty surprised if any post that had anything about it somebody could disagree with didn't end up with at least 1 death threat. People act stupid and crazy on the Internet.

As soon as one side resorts to multiple death (or rape) threats to make their point or get their way I start finding it hard to sympathize with their position...even when it's an extremely compelling one.

The "Why would I live there?" comment was always going to get him fired. People need to be a hell of a lot smarter than that if they want to make statements to the world that reflect on their employer.

That said, death threats? Really. Almost makes you wish there was a three-strike rule for morons.

That's unfortunate. Hopefully he lands on his feet and his family doesn't suffer from it. Stupid comments sure, but as was said above, they certainly didn't hurt anyone.

That depends on your definition of hurt. He has potentially caused irreperable monetary harm to Microsoft and turned legions of dedicated gamers against them. Generally speaking, this qualifies. When you are a public-facing representative of a company you can't act the way this guy did. I believe the result is entirely appropriate, given the circumstance.

You don't insult your customers or the places where your customers may live. That's common sense. Which this individual apparently lacks.

He was treating his conversation as a discussion amongst friends (if you were with friends, wouldn't your obvious joking retort to the rural town question be the same?). Unfortunately, the guy didnt seem to recognize that there is no such thing as a discussion amongst friends on the internet (esp. twitter). You have to treat every comment as one made publicly, and one that represents both you and your company (or any other org/cause you are associated with).

That a MSFT employee does not recognize this is reason enough to let go of them, but I hope he learns from this and lands on his feet.

The Internet - the ultimate lynch mob. Although my own personal opinion was: meh, I've yet to encounter a console exclusive that i'd buy a console for outside of Zelda and that's because it's nostalgic for me. Otherwise i'm a PC gamer.

Although thanks to the SimCity/Diablo fiascos, I have nothing but contempt for always online DRM.

This persons comments on twitter is an ideal example of why the internet overall makes people more stupid, disconnected from reality, and is a breeding ground for the paranoid and conspiracy nuts.

My take on it is that, some people are actually already "stupid" and/or "insensitive", wether the internet exists or not. They only problem is that, in all their "stupidity" or "ignorance", they just go ahead without thinking and make all kinds of idiotic claims, thinking that it will go unnoticed or that it will not have any impact, while in fact they are saying it out loud and in front of the whole world.Clearly, this person did not really understand "the world we live in". Hopefully he learned some important life lessons. Unfortunate for him that he had to lose his livelyhood in the process..

It's unfortunate that we're watching a career-ending mistake. Yes, he was a douche and yes, he showed a huge amount of stupidity not realizing the effect those words coming from a director-level employee would have. A smackdown was (and should) happen.

It's still tragedy, though.

And death threats? Some people take their games too seriously. "OMG, I can't get the next Xbox because my internet connection sucks" is not worth killing, or even threatening to kill, ANYONE over.

I feel bad for Orth. His comments were silly and wrong, but locking down his Twitter and deleting LinkedIn aren't the actions of an employee trying to save his career or repair damage already done.

They're the actions of someone who's likely experienced the "violent" part of "violent backlash" all too personally.

His personal twitter account should have been locked down ( private ) to begin with. If he wanted to have a public twitter profile that was used as a Microsoft employee that would have been fine with me. This way his personal views could be private among friends who would unlikely share Orth's views with the public, or if they did it would have been less of a problem for Microsoft.

The important thing to get out of this situation is keep your stupid views to yourself if you work in a capacity that is public. If you annouce to the world you work in the Xbox division then keep your tweets non-XBOX related.

People take death threats from gamers seriously? If everything kids on xbox live told me were true my mother has had sex with thousands of 14 year old boys (who are also rich and super cool).

Red herring. These two things are not the same. It's fairly easy to realize that one of them is false. The number of deranged or random internet people who (in the past) had sex with your mother is obviously (hopefully!?) going to be none. The number of deranged people willing to carry out death (or other attack) threats, sadly, is definitely not none. When people know who you are (and where you live) and you don't know who they are, you can'ttrust something like a death threat to not be coming from someone who is serious.

I really wish the FBI would get more serious about cracking down on such threats and publicizing results. They're not funny, and the results they can have on someone's life aren't a joke (pun slightly intended?--but, seriously, they're not).

I'll dare to say most Xbox 360 out there are always online one way or the other, however the real problem is (again) a company taking away a CHOICE from their customers.

I for one share a single ethernet cable among a 360, TV, bluray player and occasionally a PS3 because a) only PS3 has WiFi, b) wifi adapters are way too expensive and c) For reasons, I have only one ethernet cable going there.

On the one hand, I get it. Microsoft did what they thought they had to in the name of damage control. On the other hand, this guy is now out of a job and I doubt that anything has changed in terms of the public's perception of Microsoft - and if it IS revealed that it will be always on (which I fully suspect it will be) than the firing will look particularly spiteful because then it'll be clear that he was only saying what everyone at Microsoft was thinking.

His only real error was that he was blunt and didn't put a nice PR-approved spin on this thoughts.

This whole situation has felt weird for me.1) How can a company as large as Microsoft ignore the vast amounts of complaints from their consumer base?2) How can someone high enough to be the 'Creative Director' not be familiar with the internet3) After Sony's impressive reveal and handling PR, shouldn't Microsoft be sweating a bit?These are leading me to think Microsoft is fully aware of what is going on and the fact that they need good PR.. what better way than to piss off about 40% of your customers and come out at the reveal and say something along the lines of "and another thing.. this console will not be always-online". There would be a huge gap closed with that statement and the jump in popularity would leave people raving about the console in the months leading up to release.Or, you know.. they could just be beaurocratic idiots with no handle on technology and only care about immediate bottom line. For now I'll choose to believe the former.

It's unfortunate that we're watching a career-ending mistake. Yes, he was a douche and yes, he showed a huge amount of stupidity not realizing the effect those words coming from a director-level employee would have. A smackdown was (and should) happen.

No it's not.

It is vitally important to the continued progress of our society that errors in judgment have consequences. Serious errors in judgment must have serious consequences.

There is nothing unfortunate about the fact that Adam Orth will now have to find a new career. The consequences for him are exactly the same as the consequences for blue-collar workers who make similarly grievous errors.

NicoleC wrote:

And death threats? Some people take their games too seriously. "OMG, I can't get the next Xbox because my internet connection sucks" is not worth killing, or even threatening to kill, ANYONE over.

I look at these and shrug. There is recourse available; a death threat qualifies under federal and (all) state law as a felony terrorist threat and will be investigated if reported to authorities. As I've said, it is vitally important that serious errors in judgment have serious consequences. The maximum penalty for delivering a felony terrorist threat is, if anyone's curious, 100 years consecutive incarceration. Alternatively, indefinite incarceration without charge on suspicion of terrorist activity. While that sort of prison sentence is rare, probation is also rare in felony terrorist threat convictions; off the top of my head I'd say the average convicted threatening felon serves about 3 years and pays fines in the neighborhood of $15,000, but don't quote me on that.

It is only through strong exercise of judicial practice that we can correct lapse of important social mores. It is absolutely criminal that we spend more time pursuing and prosecuting intellectual property crime than we do pursuing and prosecuting people making terrorist threats.

Unfortunately Adam losing his job will not teach MS anything. If they do come out with the next xbox always online requirement the hypocrisy will be overwhelming. Although I do think the #dealwithit comment is what finally got him.

OK...it sucks to be Adam Orth. But really, I don't feel sad he lost his job. Yes, death threats are ALWAYS over the line and unneeded proof that many folks online need to get a job and a life. However when you take to social media as a representative of a company that makes its living by selling to consumers, and you then proceed to mock those very same consumers, it's moved beyond being a teaching moment for you. However it then becomes a teaching moment for everyone else who hasn't yet mocked their customers online.

I have no doubt Adam Orth will find another job. Will it pay less and be less prominent than the one he just left? I hope so, because that becomes the teachable moment for him.

We all have the right to screw up a bit at work. That's often how we learn best. But a serious public screw-up often leads to termination for much of the rest of the world. I don't see why it should be different at Microsoft.

Lee Hutchinson / Lee is the Senior Reviews Editor at Ars and is responsible for the product news and reviews section. He also knows stuff about enterprise storage, security, and manned space flight. Lee is based in Houston, TX.